Saddam Hussein's Fatal Mismanagement

There’s a management angle of deep importance in Saddam Hussein’s horrendous execution. But for one disastrous decision, that vile man might well still have been high up among the Middle East power rankings. Never forget that a single lousy decision can ruin the biggest enterprise – let alone one of modest size. The Iraqi dictator’s mad folly was to invade Kuwait. True, the upside potential was huge – capturing the Kuwaiti oil fields offered enormous wealth on a relatively small investment. The downside risk was that the West would do anything necessary, up to and including military intervention, to restore the status quo.

Saddam gambled on the possibility of Western feebleness. When it became clear that he was losing this dangerous bet, his only hope of avoiding total calamity lay in a swift retreat. He preferred to ‘bet the company’ by engaging in a ‘mother of all battles’ that he was bound to lose. Like all over-powerful leaders, he had been blinded by his own arrogance. The trouble is that this springs from the same qualities that take such individuals to the top in the first place. At that rarefied height, it’s all too easy to forget that ‘one false step is ne’er retrieved’, as the poet Thomas Gray once wrote.